You are a Mother
by emshosh
Summary: A conversation between mother and daughter on the Jolly Roger after the events in 3x01. Some spoilers for 3x01.


**Authors Note: Hey Everyone. This is a one shot I wrote after the season 3 premiere. Just a small mother, daughter scene I would've love to see happen. Hope you like it. **

**It has some spoiler for 3x01.**

* * *

"Emma?" The blond heard her mother call as the door to the cabin creaked open.

"What?" Emma opened her eyes annoyed.

Snow quietly made her way over to her daughter's bunk and sat down. "Just wanted to check to see how you're doing."

She scoffed. "How do you think I'm doing?" Emma's eyes went wide, as she shot up from her bed. "I'm on the Jolly Roger in Neverland. My son was kidnapped by his father's fiancé and her apparent boyfriend. And all I want to do is go and get him but I've been confined to this bed." Her arms flailed up in the air as she remembered how all four other passengers on board the Jolly Roger teamed up against her until she agreed to relax after her near drowning experience.

"Emma you drowned!" Her daughter tried to argue but Snow held up her hand. "You took a blow to your head which knocked you out and it made you drown until your father got you out of that water. Emma you need to rest. You can't just pretend like nothing happened. Trust me I know what happens when you try and fight when you aren't well." Emma slouched back in defeat. "We are going to get Henry back Emma, and the best way to do that is for you to rest until we get to land." Snow had to hide a laugh when she saw Emma agree, she was too stubborn for her own good.

For a few moments they both sat in silence, neither one wanting to be the first to talk. Snow kept on shifting her eyes to Emma and then back to the wall. Apparently Emma was good at the silent treatment.

She fought with herself, wanting her daughter to be the first to break the silence but she couldn't take it anymore, so Snow opened her mouth to talk. "Emma, you can't just jump off the ship like that." Emma opened her mouth to speak but Snow gave her a look and Emma backed off. "No, it's my turn to talk." Emma closed her mouth and sat back, a little scared about what was about to happen. "I know you say it was the only way to get us to stop fighting... but I never want you to risk your life like that. Emma we could've lost you." Snow took a deep breath trying to push the thought of losing her daughter out of her mind. "When... when your father jumped to get you, I couldn't see either of you. It terrified me because I knew that if he wasn't coming up, it was because he couldn't find you. Then he pulled you up and you weren't breathing... Emma I thought you were gone." Snow looked at Emma, who surprisingly was having a hard time trying to hide her emotions as a tear threatened to escape. Unlike her daughter, Snow let her tears flow freely. "I know you might not see your father and I as your parents, but we see you as our daughter. And we love you too much to lose you." Snow took her daughter's hand in her, and watched as another small tear rolled down Emma's cheek. "Do you know the only other time I got to hold you like that? The only other time that I had you in my arms? It was when Doc handed you over to me for the very first time and I had to say hello and goodbye. I didn't want the second time I had my daughter in my arms to be the last time and then... then you took a breath and I could breath again, because..." Snow took a shaky breath. "Because that gave us another chance."

Emma tried to breath, she was trying to keep her face a neutral as she could, but she was having a hard time. As she listened to her mother she had to bite her inner cheek to help keep her tears at bay. Of course she wanted to fall into her mother's arms and be told that it would be ok, that Henry would be back with them soon. Then her mother's words rang through her ears and the haunting memory of her son's birth flashed through her mind.

"Emma please talk to me." Snow begged as she watched her daughter struggle.

Emma opened her mouth a few times before she let out a whisper. "I never held him." She quickly looked down that the blanket covering her legs. Emma couldn't help but feel guilty.

Snow couldn't hear what Emma was saying so she tilted her head to the side, "what?" She watched her daughter struggle a little more and her heart broke.

"When Henry was born I never held him." Emma said a little louder still her attention on her blanket.

"The Doctors never let you?" Snow asked surprised.

"No, they did. He tried to get me to hold him, to comfort my son but I couldn't. If I would have held Henry, I wouldn't have let him go. It was the only way that I could give him away... and it hurt so much. All I could hear were Henry's cries, and I swear he was calling to me, he needed to me and I wanted nothing more than to hold him and tell him that it would be ok, but... I couldn't... I couldn't be a mother." Snow reached over and cleared some of Emma's tears from her cheeks, something Emma found very comforting. "I knew nothing of what a mother was and I was in jail. How was I suppose to raise my kid in jail?" She asked with a shaky breath and when Snow titled her head to the side with tears in her own eyes, she could see how much her mother loved her. She could see that it hurt her mother to see her in pain. "And after all of that, I couldn't help but wonder if my parents did the same thing before they tossed me on the side of the freeway. If they ever held me in their arms or if they just through me away like trash." Emma looked at Snow, the tears running down her mother's face, the pain in her eyes knowing that this is what her daughter had thought about her for so many years.

Snow took a couple seconds to regain herself and once she did, she took her daughter's face in her hands and waited until green eyes met green. "Emma you listen to me. I may have only gotten to hold you for a couple minutes before... before I realized that I needed to get you to that wardrobe... but placing you into your father's arms, it was the hardest thing I ever had to do." Taking her daughter's silence as approval to continue she did, "When I realized what we had to do, you started to cry and I gave you my finger and you wrapped your little hand around it and I just looked at you and memorized you. I didn't want to forget what you looked liked before I said goodbye, I didn't want to have to think about weather or not I could remember if my daughter had green eyes or blue. Then when he left with you in his arms I tried to stay strong but hearing your cries, like you were calling out for me, broke me. Watching the man I love carry the most important thing in my life away from me, tore me to pieces. So I understand how you wouldn't have wanted to let him go." Snow watched as a couple more tears fell from her daughter's eyes before she cleared them away with her thumb. Trying to make the moment a little less sad, Snow decided to speak again. " You know... even minutes after your birth we could tell that you had strong lungs. You had no hard time letting us know that you were unhappy with everything that was going one. You even overpowered my cries. Your poor father ears." Both women laughed.

Emma smiled letting herself go back to those moments with her son. "So did Henry. I could tell before he was born that he would be a fighter. He kept me up all hours of the night kicking me." Emma laughed, she tried to think of those happy moments that she shared with her son, the moments that he wouldn't know but the ones that made her life a little more bright.

Snow pointed at her daughter and laughed. "You were the same. Your father loved it, when ever he would feel a kick he would smile and ask me if I felt that. He would always ask me why I would get so grumpy." Emma raised a brow. "Don't get me wrong at first it was wonderful but sometimes it would be my rib, or my bladder or I would just want some sleep, and you just kept kicking away."

Nodding in agreement Emma laughed. "Yeah... I would always ask him why he demanded that I would be up all hours of the night. At first when I found out that I was pregnant, I tried to ignore the entire situation. I knew I wasn't going to keep him and I didn't want to get attached. So when he started kicking I tried to ignore it. I guess Henry has always been the same because he just kept on kicking me till I couldn't ignore him anymore and gave in to talking to him. I found that helped a lot to stop the kicking, just talking to him and even then I found myself getting attached. That's when I realized that if I loved him that much just from feeling him grow inside me, that if I held him, I wouldn't let him go."

Snow took both Emma's hands in her hands and they locked eyes. "You might have thought that you weren't ready to be a mother then, but you were a mother who decided to give your son his best chance. That's more than a lot of people would do. And he had a good life, it wasn't up till the book that all this started." Snow attempted to make Emma feel better but just got an eye roll in response.

"I know but its just-"

"Look at what your doing for him now Emma. You are on the Jolly Roger in Neverland to save your son. So don't look at me and try and tell me that you are not a mother, because you my darling daughter, are a mother. You are his mother and I fear for those that will try and get in your way."

With those words Emma gave up her act and crashed into her mother's arms and just let her mother hold her while she cried. 'I am a mother' she just kept on telling herself.

* * *

** Hope you enjoyed it :) Let me know what you think. Review! :)**


End file.
